"--And every thing has failed you; everything has given way under your
feet."

"But what is self-enjoyment, I ask you?"

"--And it ought to give way. Because you looked for support there,
where it is impossible to find it; because you built your house on the
quicksands--"

"Speak plainer, without metaphor, _because_ I do not understand you."

"--Because--laugh away if you like--because there is no faith in you,
no hearty warmth--and only a poor farthingsworth of intellect;[A]
you are simply a pitiable creature, a behind--your--age disciple of
Voltaire. That's what you are."

[Footnote A: Literally, "intellect, in all merely a copeck
intellect."]

"Who? I a disciple of Voltaire?"

"Yes, just such a one as your father was; and you have never so much
as suspected it."

"After that," exclaimed Lavretsky, "I have a right to say that you are
a fanatic."

"Alas!" sorrowfully replied Mikhalevich, "unfortunately, I have not
yet in any way deserved so grand a name--"

"I have found out now what to call you!" cried the self-same
Mikhalevich at three o'clock in the morning.

"You are not a sceptic, nor are you a _blase_, nor a disciple of
Voltaire; you are a marmot,[A] and a culpable marmot; a marmot with a
conscience, not a naive marmot. Naive marmots lie on the stove[B]
and do nothing, because they can do nothing. They do not even think
anything. But you are a thinking man, and yet you lie idly there. You
could do something, and you do nothing. You lie on the top with full
paunch and say, 'To lie idle--so must it be; because all that people
ever do--is all vanity, mere nonsense that conduces to nothing.'"

[Footnote A: A _baibak_, a sort of marmot or "prairie dog."]

[Footnote B: The top of the stove forms the sleeping place in a
Russian peasant's hut.]

"But what has shown you that I lie idle?" insisted Lavretsky. "Why do
you suppose I have such ideas?"

"--And, besides this, all you people, all your brotherhood," continued
Mikhalevich without stopping, "are deeply read marmots. You all
know where the German's shoe pinches him; you all know what faults
Englishmen and Frenchmen have; and your miserable knowledge only
serves to help you to justify your shameful laziness, your abominable
idleness. There are some who even pride themselves on this, that 'I,
forsooth, am a learned man. I lie idle, and they are fools to give
themselves trouble.' Yes! even such persons as these do exist among
us; not that I say t